


love is not a victory march

by Claudia_flies



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Unrequited Love, do not repost to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 10:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18618484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claudia_flies/pseuds/Claudia_flies
Summary: What do you do when there is nothing left to say?





	love is not a victory march

**Author's Note:**

> For Zilia. Always.
> 
> Lyrics from Leonard Cohen.

 

_And even though it all went wrong_

_I'll stand before the Lord of Song_

_With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah_

 

 

Bucky’s feet stop in the grass as he sees the shape of him on the bench, that achingly familiar slope of a shoulder. The curve of a back. He knows, he knows instantly what’s happened and he braces for it, waits for the memories to change, to shift, maybe to disappear altogether.

Something. _Anything_. But nothing comes and it all stays the same; orderly and linear in his head. Everything still there, vivid and terrible like always. Shuri had offered to take them away, but it hadn’t felt right then. Maybe he regrets that now.

He doesn’t move. Instead, he calls for Sam. What else can he do? What else is there to do, but to watch Sam walk forward, watch him come to that same realization too? Watch as the shield gets passed on, and Bucky still can’t move, frozen to the spot like a tree trying to take root in a hurricane.

_Unmoored_ , as they say.

Sam tries on the shield. It fits him in some strange way, it’s his now. Steve has given it away. He no longer needs it. Maybe hasn’t needed it for years and years.

Steve doesn’t look at him, doesn’t call to him. He looks at Sam with a smile, a glint of gold on his left hand. Bucky’s feet turn in the grass. They walk him up the slope and past the time-traveling platform and past the house. Past the raised garden beds and outdoor furniture. All the way to where his unremarkable rental car is parked on the side of the road.

He gets into it and starts the engine. He drives down the same gravel road he’d come down for the funeral. Gets to the paved road and turns right. Then left and then right again and eventually he’s on the highway, the miles passing in a blur. The world still torn up and destroyed around him. Crumbling even with all its inhabitants back for days now.

He just keeps driving, doesn’t know how long, at least until the sun sets, painting the horizon in pinks and oranges and purples. He does stop eventually at a motel near on exit ramp. There’s a girl at the cashier, popping gum and barely looking at him as she takes his money and hands him a room key.

The room is worn and weary, smelling of mildew and unwashed human bodies. Bucky goes into the bathroom where the light blinks and crackles before fully turning on. He strips and steps into the shower, letting the water run over his head and face, breathing in the steam. He doesn’t want to think. Not yet. _Not yet_.

The tears come much later, when he’s sitting on the starched, scratchy sheets of the motel bed in his t-shirt and underpants. The only light in the room is still the wan light from the bathroom. The tears roll down his cheeks without sound or effort, like a dam burst from its banks. Slow, steady, inevitable.

He knows he’s being incredibly selfish in these thoughts, he knows that; but for that split second between realization and understanding, he’d hoped that it’d be him too sitting on that bench with Steve, sitting there as an old man, with his left sleeve pinned up, all neat and tidy. His own history rewritten by Steve’s hand.

Of course it wouldn’t have been the way he’d fantasized. Of course not. That’s a dream he’d let go a long time past, even if that steady little flame in his chest that burned for Steve had never gone out, no matter how cold or stripped or hollowed out he’d become. But he’d thought that maybe he’d be the fun uncle, the Sunday afternoon visitor on the periphery of Steve’s life. Still there, still important in his own small way.

And Steve does deserve _everything_ , he deserves it all, a happy long life with the person he loves the most. That’s what Bucky’s always wanted for him. But just here, just now, in the empty, barren hotel room, he allows himself to feel it. That yawning sorrow and helplessness of remembering it all, those seventy years stretched behind him, now only overlaid with the knowledge that Steve was out there in the world, alive and well and knowing where Bucky was all that time.

And he hadn’t come. Hadn’t pulled Bucky down from that operating table in ‘49, or from his isolation cell in ‘52, or, or, or. There are so many times when he still remembered, where he thought that Steve was dead and he was all alone in the world. It’s all lies now.

He buries his face in his knees, tries to stifle the sobs that finally break free. He hasn’t let them out _ever_. He doesn’t deserve to put that on Steve, he _doesn’t_. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how much that animal panic suddenly crawls up his throat.

_Please, please. Someone, please._

He ignores the buzzing of his phone. It’s Sam calling, probably wondering where he is. He turns it face down on the second bed in the room, and lets it ring and ring and ring, until it eventually stops. Maybe Sam had given up or maybe it had run out of battery.

He sits there on the bed until morning, until the wan light of the early sun filter through the window. Then he washes his face and dresses. Shoving all those memories into the deep dark hole where they live, where he keeps them. He gets into his car and heads back to the interstate. He heads west, the rising sun in his rearview mirror and his phone turned off on the seat beside him.

 


End file.
